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Texas business looks at Billings to locate call center with 500 jobs
An unnamed communications company from Dallas is courting Billings and three other cities in its search for a place to locate a call center that eventually could provide 500 to 700 jobs.
Joe McClure, executive director of Billings’ Big Sky Economic Development Authority, said he received a call from a site selector about three or four months ago. Last week, four representatives flew to Billings to check out the town.
By JAN FALSTAD
Of The Gazette Staff
"They said they had a Fortune 500 communications company that was looking at Billings for a customer service, technical support, inbound call center," McClure said. "So, this isn’t an outbound sales company that calls you at dinner time."
Similar to the competition Billings was in two years ago for a Dell Computers technology center, this inquiry is shrouded in secrecy.
McClure said he doesn’t know the names of the other three cities under consideration and the four people who came here didn’t let the name of their employer pass their lips.
"They wouldn’t even pass out their cards," he said.
Although he hasn’t seen specifics, McClure told the Big Sky EDA board members Thursday morning that the Fortune 500 company pays between $19,000 to $22,000 per year, plus benefits.
McClure said he expects to receive a request for proposal any day now, which is a good sign because that process provides specific information about the company.
"This is a level playing field," he said. "It isn’t a game some businesses play about, ‘What can you give us?’ "
Talk of subsidies and incentives to lure the company to Billings hasn’t come up directly yet, McClure said, but it will.
"They haven’t come right out and said that," he said. "When I said level playing field, I meant they are giving
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each city the same information and seeing who wants it bad enough."
McClure flies to Dallas July 22 to meet with company officials and present Billings’ proposal.
The company sent a real estate and a human resources expert, an assistant and an executive to Billings for two days last week. They looked at real estate for an 80,000 square-foot building on about 15 acres. With a building that large, McClure said the only area that made sense was on the West End, so that’s where they looked.
The officials also met with officials from a handful of Billings businesses, including Wal-Mart and the Wells Fargo Loan Processing Center, to discuss the quality and cost of the city’s labor pool.
At the board meeting, McClure said the Texas prospect isn’t a bull’s eye, but it’s a good one.
"This is not in the middle of our target because obviously we’d like to see the wages higher, but anything that can create those many jobs with a solid Fortune 500 company can only help the city," he said.
Two years ago, Billings came in a bridesmaid to Roseburg, Ore., for the Dell deal.
Last spring, Billings landed the Bresnan Communications network center with about 100 initial jobs after offering the company a $1.62 million financing package. The building is under construction on Monad Road next to NorthWestern Energy’s building.
Billings is reaching a critical mass, McClure said, where the population crosses the 100,000 mark, not counting county residents. When a city crosses that threshold, it gets listed in key publications and Web sites used prospecting businesses.
"Then that starts popping up on people’s radar screens," he said. "We’ve had more activity in the last six months than in the previous 2 1/2 years."
If Billings does land a Fortune 500 company, McClure said that can add prestige and help attract more industry.
Meanwhile, he is flying to California on July 26 to talk with four high-tech companies interested in either expanding or relocating to Billings.
The California businesses have annual revenues of between $3 million and $13 million and employ between 30 to 130 people. However, McClure said not everyone would move.
While the number of jobs is smaller than the Dallas prospect offers, McClure said the pay is much better.
"They have between 30 to 50 employees and pay between $50,000 to $70,000 in salaries, plus benefits" he said.
Jan Falstad can be contacted at (406) 657-1306 or at [email protected]
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
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